When I was pregnant with O, I did very little research on normal infant sleep. I was ready for sleepless nights during the newborn stage, and the four-month sleep progression was something many of my friends had prepared me for, but as far as I knew, it was only going to get better from there. For some babies, it does, but for most, sleep will have its ups and downs over the first year (or two). And this certainly was the case for O (we still have challenges from time to time at 18-months old.) No one prepared me for some of the common sleep challenges we experienced when O was around seven to eleven months. I had never heard of false starts and split nights before.
A big part of my mission is to spread the word that infant and toddler sleep is NOT linear in hopes that by having realistic expectations, parents can stress less about their child’s sleep. This passion comes from my own experience. As you know, I did not want to sleep train O and learned early on to trust my intuition (if you missed it, you can read all about that here). Still, around the age of seven to eleven months, O went through many developmental changes, and it became clear during this stage that following my intuition was not enough. False starts and split nights were something I couldn’t just follow my instinct to get through, on top of teething, illnesses (yes, plural), and, to cap it all off, a fractured ankle (more on this coming soon).
These months were hard, and while I knew without a doubt that a responsive approach to sleep was what felt best for our family, when O experienced false starts and split nights I had so many doubts as a mom. And with everyone asking me if O was sleeping through the night (and she wasn’t – but guess what, none of us do), I was convinced I was doing something wrong. Was it normal to have this many challenges at this age (answer: completely normal), and what options did I have if I didn’t want to sleep train (answer: lots of options – it is a myth that we need to let our babies cry it out, or wait it out) were just a few of the questions that went through my mind DAILY.
With each challenge, and as you’ll read in my next two posts, they were seriously one right after another, I put on my researcher hat and got to the bottom of the issue, and made changes in a way that felt good for our family. Once again, I was fascinated by what I was finding. There were so many options aside from cry it out, and I was shocked that everything O was doing was completely normal. It was during this stage that I knew I wanted to spread the word on normal infant sleep and when I ultimately decided to become a Baby-Lef Sleep and Well-being Specialist.
So let’s walk through my experience with each issue together. I started this blog to write about this entire stage in one post but quickly realized there was just too much to cover. In this post, I will share our experience with false starts and split nights. Stay tuned for an upcoming part two on other sleep challenges during the 7-11 months of O’s sleep journey.
False starts
False starts are when your baby wakes shortly after being put to bed, usually within an hour, and the baby needs to be supported back to sleep. These started happening for O when she was almost seven months old. Of all the “issues” we had with O’s sleep, this is one that we did the least about and caused us the least stress. The part that was most challenging for me was that I would go to bed when O went to bed since we were bedsharing (you can read about the start of our journey to bedsharing here), just fall asleep, then be woken up to resettle O. You know that groggy feeling you get when you’re exhausted, and we’re just woken up shortly after falling asleep (I’m sure all you mamas know what I’m talking about), it makes me feel sick to my stomach. Then, I often have trouble falling asleep after getting O back to sleep, which only took 10-15 minutes. So this was not fun, to say the least…
Once the false starts began, they happened like clockwork. Every night, after O had been asleep for 40 minutes on the dot (I kid you not, it was that predictable), she would wake. After a week or so of this, I decided not to fall asleep until after that initial wake. I stopped rocking O to sleep in her nursery before transferring her to our bed and started nursing her to sleep on the couch. Then, once she was asleep, my husband and I watched TV until she woke after 40 minutes, then I’d nurse and sing her back to sleep, transfer her to our bed, then settle in for our longest stretch of the night, which by this age was around 3-5 hours, depending on the night.
We enjoyed this routine and treated it like a mini date each night. We’d text each other throughout the day about what show we wanted to watch that night. We kept this as part of our routine until false starts stopped happening when O was eleven months old.
Overall, I didn’t do much research about false starts simply because it didn’t seem like a big problem since she resettled easily, and I quickly came up with a solution that I enjoyed. I also didn’t try to figure out what was causing them to happen. Baby not being tired enough at bedtime, needing more connection or being hungry and requiring a longer feeding are just a few possible things that may be going on if your little one I having false starts. Looking back, I wonder if false starts was O’s “warning sign” that she needed less daytime sleep because shortly after false starts began, we experienced split nights… which are hands down the hardest thing I’ve experienced sleep-wise with O.
Split nights
A split night is when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night and is awake for an hour or more, sometimes for an entire wake window (this was O), often full of energy, ready to play and act as if it’s morning. They also happen consistently, so while it is normal for babies to have one-off nights like this, or even a short spell of a few around periods of development, split nights happening multiple times per week for weeks on end is not normal. Often, they are caused by an imbalance in daytime and nighttime sleep (i.e. baby is napping too much during the day or is going to bed too early).
A common misconception is that babies need to sleep for 2-hour naps and 12 hours at night to get their sleep needs to be met. I definitely fell victim to this baby sleep myth. I was striving for the “recommended” 2-hour naps, and she just didn’t need this much sleep. I soon realized that 12-13 hours of sleep was O’s “sweet spot” at this age and was well within the normal range of recommended hours of sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, babies between the age of 4-11 months need, on average, between 12-15 hours of sleep in 24 hours, but anywhere from 10-18 hours may be normal for this age. You can check out the full article here.
It took a little over a month to eliminate O’s split nights. The first few weeks that these happened, I would let O and I catch up on sleep by sleeping in and taking long naps, but as I began researching the issue, I realized this was reinforcing the split nights. Our only way out was to consolidate O’s night sleep and cap her naps. Since O was already staying up until 9 or 9:30 pm, and I didn’t want to push her bedtime any later, I started capping O’s naps. We started capping her total daytime sleep at around 3.5 hours, then went to 3 hours a week later when that wasn’t enough to end the split nights. Then, a week later, when that still wasn’t enough, we implemented a consistent wake-up time of 7:30 am, which did the trick.
We’d strive for one 2-hour nap a day, then keep the others at 30-60 mins, depending on how many naps she was taking at that time (I will post all about nap transitions soon). This allowed her to sleep for 10 hours at night, with just a few night wakings to nurse. All her sleep needs were being met, and anything more than that caused her to wake up and want to play in the middle of the night.
I realize as I write this out that it sounds straightforward. But I want to reiterate that it wasn’t easy to go through. If you’re currently going through this, I feel for you. These nights are super tough. And while it is easy to say, “just tweak their sleep totals,” I know all too well how daunting it is to play around with that all on your own.
The math of it all can send anyone crazy (I’m an economist, and even I find “nap math” makes my head spin), especially when you’re exhausted. And waiting to see if it makes a difference is so hard. It often doesn’t take one minor change to eliminate, so you’re making changes with no real end date in sight, which can be anxiety-inducing. Not to mention it’s hard on the little ones. You are essentially rewiring their circadian rhythm, which makes them extra tired and sometimes grumpy. I definitely caved a few times and let O nap a bit longer than usual to “catch up,” and this always backfired and led to a split night. There are just so many factors at play, which is why it took about a month of making changes to eliminate them altogether.
This is where having a sleep specialist to help navigate these changes can be so helpful and is something I wish I had done. It would have been so valuable to have someone in my corner to walk me through and help me get to the root of this sleep challenge. This is why I can’t wait to start supporting families one-on-one with their child’s sleep challenges. There is so much at play it can be overwhelming to figure out on your own.
If you are going through sleep challenges, whether false starts, split nights, or something else, I’d love to help you navigate them. Click here to send me an email; I’d love to chat. You have so many options aside from cry it out or wait it out, and I know together, we can find a solution that feels right for you and your baby.
